


Borrowed

by 4wholecats



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Kidnapping, i love tatiana a lot ok, tatiana wielding gradivus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 03:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12423753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4wholecats/pseuds/4wholecats
Summary: If a trained squad of Alm’s trusted soldiers couldn’t find Zeke, then her chances were non existent at best. She crushes that thought under her heel as she marches back down the hall to the closet. She throws open the door and pulls out Gradivus, newly polished blade shining in the dim candlelight.(Aka Tatiana breaks a man's collarbone and cries on her husband)





	Borrowed

Once the war is over, Tatiana can’t help but fall back into her old schedule, the one she had before Nuibaba came crashing through her life. Every morning after Zeke leaves for patrol, she remains alone in the house they share, nursing a hot cup of coffee and staring down the day’s itinerary. Usually, she goes down to the church, because they could always use an extra set of hands, but today she’s been given a day off. Her to-do list is sparse and her mug is nearly empty, so today, she relaxes.

 

She takes a walk on the beach after the chores are done, letting sand get into her shoes and her hair tickle her face. She’s got shells in her pockets when she arrives back home, she sets about diligently cleaning them, because if she doesn’t they will smell later. Once done, she lines them up oh so carefully on the table to dry. Hopefully they will be done before she has to make dinner.

 

The sun is starting to set, casting bright splashes of color into the house through the windows. Tatiana begins lighting the candles and by the time she is done, it is dark. Zeke should be home soon, and Tatiana feels a little bad that she didn’t save him anything to eat, even though it is late. She settles on the couch, pulling a book off the shelf as she goes, and waits.

 

* * *

 

Tatiana wakes up the next morning on the couch. This is not an uncommon experience, except for the fact that she is cold. The blanket that Zeke puts over her as she sleeps is still on the table, folded and untouched. She stands, and begins to make her way over to the bedroom.

 

She opens the door, preparing to scold her lover for not taking proper care of her on this not-really-that-cold fall morning, only to find the room empty, bed neatly made.

 

She’s not nervous, definitely not. There have been days when Zeke has to stay at the base because of work. Of course, that hasn’t happened since the war, but there must surely be a lot of paperwork to do after Zofia and Rigel’s union, and that would keep any soldier busy. He’ll come home tonight, and he’ll halfheartedly complain about some new recruit that filed all the reports wrong. Tatiana continues on with her day with this thought in mind, still slightly uneasy.

 

* * *

 

 She waits on the couch for him again.

 

She wakes up cold again.

 

She can’t go to the station herself, because it’s several hours away on horseback and she has no transport except her own two feet. So she does the first thing she can think of, and scrawls a hastily written note to the commander there. She hopes it doesn’t sound too worried or desperate, even though that’s how she feels. Then, she takes a minute to calm her shaking hands before penning another, much neater letter, addressed to the One Kingdom’s castle. It’s entirely possible that Alm summoned Zeke there, even though it’s strange that Zeke didn’t notify her first.

 

The station commander’s responses arrives before her lover does, and he hasn’t seen Zeke in more than three days. Apparently he never even arrived to patrol on the day she last saw him, and the letter is crumpling in her hands before she can even finish reading it.

 

For the first time in her adult life, she has absolutely no idea what to do.

 

She sleeps at the church that night, but in reality, she doesn’t sleep at all. Alm’s response comes in the next morning, along with a small band of soldiers with strict orders to find the missing general. They escort Tatiana home from the church with the utmost care, but in the end they mount their horses and ride off and she is alone once again.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t till day ten that she finds herself standing in front of the closet at the end of the hall. She opens the door sluggishly and roots around the mess of spare sheets and towels until her hand brushes against something metal. She grabs it carefully, pulling the weapon out from it’s linen nest.

 

Zeke’s sword isn’t here, but Gradivus is heavy in her hands, and she doesn’t remember why she pulled it out of the closet to begin with. But now she’s out of the hall and on the couch again, and the heavy lance is sitting on her lap, ribbons trailing across the floor.

 

Gradivus doesn’t return to it’s home that night, or the night after. When one of the scouts comes back with a report of “no news”, she answers the door with one hand wrapped around the hilt for support. The young man eyes the legendary weapon warily, but assures Tatiana that the search isn’t over.

 

* * *

 

It only takes Tatiana one more day. One more day until it’s three in the morning, and she’s pushed all the furniture around in the small living room, creating a wide open space in the center. She takes a long stick she found in the woods and swings it wildly, scuffing the floor and nicking her ankles. She trips over one of her own socks and lands on her back, breathing hard. There are tear tracks on her face and bruises on her legs from the branch, but she gets up, and she begins the savage dance again.

 

A week later, the bruises are gone. Her arms and legs hurt from strain, but there is a fire in her eyes that hasn’t gone out since that same young soldier told her with a rejected look in his eyes that there was still no sign of Zeke anywhere in the former Rigel.

 

Tatiana puts gloves on the first time she wields Gradivus, not only because the newly formed calluses on her hands, but because she is afraid of slipping up and cutting herself. It’s a heavy lance, much heavier than it looks, and the blade on the end is large enough to remove one of her feet in one swipe if she’s not careful.

 

The lance is more heavy and unwieldy than her trusty stick, but Tatiana manages to not remove any of her own toes while waving the thing around. She takes it out back to throw at some hay bales, but after drastically missing her mark (the damn thing weighs as much as she does) she decides that sometimes one must settle for good enough.

 

Early the next morning, she packs a waterskin, a week's worth of food, and and every pair of pants she owns. Then she stops and faces the dark and empty house alone. What was her plan?

 

If a trained squad of Alm’s trusted soldiers couldn’t find Zeke, then her chances were non existent at best. She crushes that thought under her heel as she marches back down the hall to the closet. She throws open the door and pulls out Gradivus, newly polished blade shining in the dim candlelight.

 

* * *

 

When the young soldier next arrives for his weekly update, Tatiana is ready for him. She puts one of Zeke’s cloaks over her shoulders and reaches for her bag and weapon before answering the door, not stopping even as she pushes past the young man, who looks on in stuttering confusion. She saddles up a borrowed horse and loads her travel bag, even as the scout sputters next to her, hands up defensively. With one stare he’s helping her onto the horse and they are on their way to the soldier’s base. The whole time, Tatiana grips Gradivus like a lifeline, even long after her fingers go numb.

 

At the base, they don’t make eye contact with her. Not even the most loyal of Zeke’s men can look at her for long, and it’s not hard for her to figure out why. They all look guilty, and _she_ must look terrible. Her hair is wild and her eyes have bags, not to mention the scratches and blisters that cover her hands from her training sessions.

 

It’s been just under a month since Zeke disappeared, and yet she feels years older. Her uniform sits in her dresser back at home, and instead she wears a pair of old, worn work pants and a threadbare sweater. Over all of it, Zeke’s cape drapes awkwardly over her too-small shoulders. It’s heavier and more restricting than the light and airy clothes she is used to, but it’s warm and it smells like him. In rooms full of downcast eyes and quiet whispers, it makes her feel slightly less alone.

 

Tatiana makes a point not to yell most of the time. Not only is yelling incredibly rude, it’s also usually ineffective at getting things done, especially in environments such as the church.

 

But right now, Tatiana is not at the church, and softly spoken words and prayer have gotten her nowhere. As soon as they let her into the inner part of the base where the offices are, she wastes no time in locating the commander of the base. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man with grey sideburns and one unseeing blue eye. The lines on his face speak of many years of battle, and the guards that stand around his office shake their heads in cautious warning and worry as she comes marching towards them, hands balled into fists. She pushes past them, and slams both her palms down on the commander’s desk.

 

It takes less than five minutes for him to order a squad to assemble. When she walks out of his office, she hides her trembling hands under her cloak and marches off, leaving absolute silence in her wake. She leaves the guards quaking in their boots, and she knows it.

 

The small group is set to leave at the crack of dawn the next morning, so Tatiana has some time to kill. The base itself is small in comparison to the one in the capital city, but there are still rooms to sleep in and places to explore. She meanders for a little while before retrieving her bag and her weapon from the stables. When offered help, she politely declines in favor of finding her own way around. Anyways, she has a strange feeling that if she were to hand off Gradivus to anyone, she might not get it back for a while. A little voice in the back of her head laughs and thinks “oh Zeke would be so mad if you lost his weapon to some guard”, but she’s too tired to agree with it.

 

She takes Zeke’s room for the night, of course. It is sparse, with only a bed, a desk, and a chair, but it will do. There are books piled on the floor next to the desk, and she grabs one off the top of the stack as she makes her way over to the bed. It’s a dull account of Archanian tactics and battle strategy, and for the first time in weeks, she’s out like a light almost immediately.

 

* * *

 

The sun isn’t even up when she wakes to a knock on the door, asking the search group to assemble. She scrambles up out of bed, morning routine slashed to smithereens as she hastily puts on her clothes and shoves all her belongings into her small pack. She puts Zeke’s cloak over her shoulders again, this time tying it in the front so that it won’t slip off in case of battle. Then, with weapon and supplies in hand, she makes her way to the stables, still rubbing sleep out of her tired eyes.

 

One of the soldiers, a young blonde woman with freckles and blue armor, hands her the reins of a horse that is not the one she brought with her. The woman explains that this horse is trained for battle and that it would not be smart to ride on one that may get scared and run away. Tatiana doesn’t plan on actually fighting on horseback, because that isn’t how she trained herself, but thanks the woman and mounts the mighty black steed regardless.

 

And then they are off. The others convince Tatiana to stay at the back of their small formation, between two other more experienced knights. Tatiana can’t help but feel grateful, since while she is determined, she is also inexperienced and very, very scared.

 

They don’t even know where they are going, really. The base commander gave them a map with some suspicious locations on it for them to check out, but Tatiana doesn’t really understand what all the military speak means and follows the leader. The first few places they go to are nothing special, mostly bandit nests long abandoned.

 

The fourth location on the list is a little more interesting. It’s an old stone building that might have been a castle once, standing tall over a stretch of grassy plains. Even from a distance, Tatiana can see several armed guards by the gate, chatting animatedly. Their dented armor and rough features mark them as bandits, and she grips the reins of her mount and looks to the leader for directions.

 

The small group retreats into a nearby wooded area in order to prepare. Tatiana, along with two other soldiers, dismount and ready their weapons for battle. Someone tosses her a trainee's breastplate and she struggles with the buckles for a few moments before someone assists her. It’s not very strong and it’s a little too big, but it will protect her better than her threadbare sweater could ever hope to.  

 

The others corral her into the center of their small force, blocked on all sides by armor and horses. It’s probably one of the safest places on the battlefield, but everything is starting to catch up with Tatiana and she must admit that she feels a bit faint. She is no stranger to war, and no stranger to killing for the sake of her loved ones, but there is a difference between letting holy magic do the work and driving several pounds of sharpened steel through someone’s forehead.

 

The guards spot them as soon as they are out of the forest, and it doesn’t take very long before arrows rain down upon them. Tatiana scrambles under one of her companion’s shields, but not before an arrow scratches along her arm, tearing her shirt and leaving a hard read line beneath. Thankfully, their group has a bow knight among them, and he is easily able to neutralize all of the archers along the castle walls. The enemy defences are tough, and the castle is much more well-guarded than they originally anticipated.

 

So these bandits _are_ hiding something.

 

They are almost to the massive doors before Tatiana is in any real danger. A mercenary lunges around a corner, nearly skewering her in one sweep, but not before she jumps back, the sword not even touching her. Then, in a moment of mental blindness and panic, she forgets _everything_. She doesn’t remember what she spent weeks in her living room diligently teaching herself. She doesn’t remember the times during the war where she could simply summon her staff and end the poor man before he takes another step. She doesn’t even remember the lessons that Zeke tried to give her back when she first met him, when he lived in a small back room at the church and she would sneak away from laundry duty to see him. Her mind goes completely blank as the mercenary prepares to strike again.

 

All she knows is that she is holding something heavy. So she lifts it, and she swings.

 

Gradivus smashes down into the man’s collarbone, slicing it like butter. It only stops when it hits the middle of his chest, and the man gives one horrified, regretful gasp before his eyes roll back in his head and he crumples. Tatiana stands in shock for just a moment before yanking the lance out of his ribs and spinning towards another bandit, holding Gradivus’s hilt as if it were an axe. She fights gracelessly and brutally, so unlike the saintly twirls Zeke’s men are use to, that her fellow soldiers give her a wide berth, just incase she makes a mistake and swings at them.

 

It doesn’t take long for the senior officers to finish off the last of the bandits and capture the castle, leaving the stragglers to flee and the victorious army to explore their new territory. The castle is as old and drab on the inside as it is on the outside, with moldy tapestries hanging on the walls and various weapons piled up on the floor; a standard bandit operation.

 

The treasure room is surprisingly bare, with empty chests lining the walls. There is a heavy desk pushed to one side of the room, and the chair that belongs to it lays on the floor, hastily abandoned. It seems that the leader of this little group ran out to defend his fortress along with the rest of his men. Tatiana almost thinks that honorable, except for the fact they haven’t found any sign of prisoners yet. She walks around the room, taking in the smell of old books and iron, while the others search for any sign of foul behavior outside of “normal bandit activities”.

 

The small blonde paladin leafs through papers left scattered on the desk. She picks up a handful of them and frowns. She turns to the leader and hands him one of the sheets. He reads it, then hurriedly hands it off to someone else before ducking out of the room, a few seconds later, Tatiana can hear the sound of the main door opening and closing. What was going on?

 

The paper is making it’s way around the circle, and finally, it gets to her. She can hardly read the wild, loopy handwriting but among the scribbles she can make out the words “King Alm”, “ransom”, and near the bottom, “Rigelian general”. She brings a hand to her mouth; Zeke is here somewhere, and he is alive. There’s some hushed plans being made around her but everything is a blur because there are tears pricking in the corners of her eyes and a wide and relieved smile growing on her face.

 

The main gate opens again and their leader walks in briskly, a blood-speckled ring of keys in one hand. He divides the group and sends half of them back outside to ready the horses for departure, just in case of a trap. Tatiana follows those that remain down the narrow halls until they reach a padlocked door. Their leader makes quick work of it, and they all file inside the damp room below.

 

It’s a proper dungeon, all things considered. It’s got everything a spooky dungeon needs, cells, rats, chains on the ground, and all sorts of threatening weapons placed against the walls. And, like many dungeons, it has prisoners.

 

In the cell closest to the door, there are several young women, all huddled together, every single one of them thin and ill looking but otherwise untouched. There are a few other soldiers in the cell next to them, all sporting various minor injuries such as black eyes and split lips.

 

It’s in the last cell that Tatiana finds what she is looking for.

 

Zeke isn’t moving, and for a moment, Tatiana’s heart stops because she’s almost sure he is dead. Gradivus clatters to the floor as she lunges for the key ring, hands shaking so badly that she can hardly get the proper one in the lock. She slams the cell door open so hard that it swings back at her, almost hitting her squarely in the face. One of the soldiers being let out of the next cell over weakly remarks that Zeke hasn’t woken up in almost a day or so, and she hastily feels for a pulse.

 

It’s there, and it’s not particularly weak, so Tatiana lets the waterworks flow, not out of anguish, but out of pure relief. She carefully tries to shake him awake, but he doesn’t respond, so Tatiana does something completely rude and unladylike. She slaps Zeke as hard as she physically can.

 

She can hear some of the soldiers behind hiss in sympathetic pain, but Zeke’s eyebrows scrunch up and he moves around slightly, and that’s all she needs before she throws herself on top of him. She doesn’t care that he smells like dry blood or that the floor is dirty or that a rat is getting a little too close for comfort, she’s more relieved than she has ever been in her life. When she finally gets off of him, his eyes are open and he is looking hazily around the room.

 

She helps him sit up and gets a good look at his face. His hair is too long and he’s scruffy, but other than that, he seems unharmed aside from a rather large and ugly bruise on the back of his head. That would also explain the fact that his pupils are dilated, even in the light of the lantern the group brought down with them. He mumbles a little bit and goes touch her face. Or at least, he tries, because his aim is off and he misses by almost a full foot.

 

It doesn’t matter though, because Tatiana is hugging him again and crying and because now, finally, that stifling feeling of loneliness in her chest is gone.  

**Author's Note:**

> my ao3 account? more like every time i write zeke he gets a little closer to being a human corpse (whoops)
> 
> anyways this is rlly just a big gift for the people of the tatizeke discord server! if any of you are reading this you are all extremely cool and awesome and i hope you enjoyed!!!!!!


End file.
